Iowa Congresswoman Ashley Hinson says the Trump Administration is making progress in trade talks with China.
President Trump is flying back from China today after his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. “I think that the president and his team and Secretary Rubio are making meaningful progress in these discussions,” Hinson said. “There is more work to be done, but we cannot accept the status quo.”
U.S. officials announced this morning that they expect China to buy billions of dollars worth of U.S. agricultural commodities over the next three years. China stopped buying U.S. soybeans last spring after Trump announced new tariffs, then last October made less than half of the soybean purchases it had promised to make. Hinson welcomes Trump’s hardline approach to China. “U.S. policy, I think, toward China has been weak essentially as long as I’ve been alive, a failure. We’ve let them rip off our jobs, our intellectual property and we’ve been operating under the assumption that they would just step up and play by the norms and rules and they have not done that,” said Hinson, a Republican from Marion who was born in 1983 during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
Hinson is a member of the U.S. House Select Committee on China. “I am encouraged that President Trump is taking on China in this meaningful way with this visit,” Hinson said. “What I’m hearing from Iowans is they want new markets and fair trade deals. They want China to stop ripping off workers and our businesses and then anoother issue that I hear from a lot of people on: pharmaceutical access and pharmaceutical drugs. We need greater transparency there into our supply chain so we can help to lower costs.”
A report cited by the House Select Committee on China this year indicates about 40% of the raw materials used to make medications prescribed in the U.S. come from China.
Hinson made her comments Thursday during her weekly conference call with Iowa reporters that’s organized by her congressional staff. Hinson is running for the U.S. Senate and faces former state legislator Jim Carlin next month’s GOP Primary.